"Do some posters for me," Noah said, offering me a marker.

"Sure. What do you want me to write? Vote for Noah..." I paused. I'd forgotten his last name.

Kyle laughed. "He doesn't know your last name!"

"Yeah well, he probably doesn't know mine either," I defended myself.

"Tanaka," Noah answered, smirking at me.

"It's not important," I said.

The halls were beginning to empty. "Got ta go." Kyle said, jumping away from the lockers.

"Do some posters tonight!" Noah yelled after him. He turned to me and muttered, "I bet he does two."

We made it back to class, barely on time. I put my hands on MacKenzie's shoulders as I sat down behind her. She turned, her face questioning.

"He seems fine," I explained, bewildered. What was his Yurei talking about? Kyle actually seemed better, not worse.

"That's good," she said.

"No. It's wrong." I explained what his Yurei had told me this morning in history.

"I don't get it."

"Yeah, I know."

No matter how I thought about it, nothing added up. I couldn't figure it out. The creepy, strange Kyle from our paintball round was gone. He was healthy, all of a sudden. It didn't make sense.

I knew one thing for certain, though. Yurei couldn't lie. They were what they were-mirrors of the future.

The rain poured down outside the school windows as I racked my brains the rest of the afternoon. I finally decided I was going to need Noah's help. I would have to tell him that I thought Kyle was in trouble and we needed to see him this afternoon. Kyle wouldn't think a visit from Noah was too odd...although I didn't know how tight they were as friends. I could use a little advice from Noah's Yurei...an amazing guy, really.

I concentrated on Noah and what his Yurei had been like. "Hey," I said aloud, standing in the hall right before the last class of the day.

Hey. It was Noah's voice, just deeper.

I turned around and he stood there...tanned, the same brilliant green eyes and patient, calm expression. As if he were expecting me. How smart was he, anyway? He was intimidating.

"I need help with Kyle."

I'm not sure what I can do.

"I'm desperate. I don't know what to say."

We're talking about preventing a teen suicide, right?

A teen suicide? He was acting like Kyle was some kind of specimen. "Yeah. A teen suicide." I didn't know if he caught my sarcasm.

I'm sorry if I'm out of touch. I'm doing my best. In my life, Kyle did actually succeed in killing himself, but if there's a chance we can change that, I'll help.

That shocked me. Were the Yurei living different futures? Was Kyle's Yurei real?

I asked, "Will Noah go see him this afternoon?" I was asking him about a change in the future; would he know what would happen if I changed it?

The older Noah raised his eyebrows. Well, if he believes you then yes, definitely.

"Is there anything else you can tell me that might help? I mean, as an older person?"

He didn't laugh at my question. Yes. Don't give up. Ever.

"On Kyle?"

On anything worthwhile.

He faded after that little bit of fortune cookie advice, leaving me alone in the hallway, a few loose pieces of paper floating around and the rain beating down on the roof above.

I walked in late to class and got a detention. I tucked the yellow slip in my pocket. My parents would be thrilled.

We watched a movie, the darkened room serving as a perfect atmosphere for my thoughts.

All day classes had been getting in the way of what I really wanted to do. Conversations I needed to have, answers I was looking for, all rushed and crushed into three minute spaces. The clock moved so slowly... finally it reached 2:30 and I left my seat. I was almost the first one out the door. Luckily my detention was for tomorrow. Okay, where was Noah...he drove home so he probably wasn't in a big hurry.

I found him at his locker with Katie. She was piling books into his hands, her pony tail bobbing as she bent down and stood up. "I think I've got one more book." The tower reached to his chin. He looked over at me.

"She needs them all."

She put the last book on the stack, which went up to his nose. "I'm cleaning out my locker. I wanted to see what's on the bottom."

Noah smiled at me, a faint mimic of the patient expression on his Yurei that startled me.

"No, she doesn't. She just wanted to see my muscles bulging. She could have just asked me to flex. It would have saved us a lot of time."

She patted his arm. "It is impressive. But I think I found a twinkie from last year. It's still good, probably."

He sighed. "Gross."

I didn't know how to talk about Kyle in front of Katie. It hadn't occurred to me that Noah would drive her home every day, but I guess he would. I might as well just jump in.

"Hey, I need a favor."

Katie removed a few books so I could see Noah's face.

"Sure," he answered, a cautious look in his eyes.

"Can you give me a ride home?"

He snorted. "I thought it was going to be important. Like would I donate you a kidney. Yes, I can give you a ride home. Does MacKenzie need one? You guys live right next door so it's no big deal."

Hadn't thought about that. "Yeah, if you don't mind." I grabbed my cell phone and began texting her. I was sure she hadn't left yet. We always walked together. I texted, want a ride Yes Katies locker I wasn't sure if she was completely comfortable with him yet.

ok Katie had finally put all the books back in her locker by the time MacKenzie arrived, dragging her parka behind her on the ground. It was easy to pick out the cute, short girl in pink from the crowd. She watched me as she walked up, and I kind of relished being the center of her attention. When she got to us I picked her coat up.

"This was dragging on the ground," I told her.

"I know. I hate it. It's puffy."

Ah. Maybe I shouldn't get one like it, then.

Noah led us out to his car while I tried like mad to think of a way to get him to drop Katie off first. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and texted MacKenzie.

Can you get noah to drop katie off first? I need to talk to him.

She looked down at her cell, but she didn't say anything. We all got into the old, very abused Mercury Tracer. The Tracer was missing a hubcab and sounded like a spaceship when he started it up, a high pitched whine that reached a frantic fever pitch.

MacKenzie suddenly said. "Katie, do you want to come over to my house? We can work on that CD for Noriko we promised her."

"Oh. wow. I forgot about that. Let me ask my mom."

One phone call later and Katie was going to MacKenzie's. I squeezed her hand and she pressed my hand back, pleased with herself. She should be. That was brilliant. I texted her and told her so.

I know she responded as we pulled into her driveway.

She and Katie jumped out into the rain, screaming like girls.

I hopped up to the front seat and we waved goodbye to them. My house was only two houses away. Not enough time to talk him into this. Oh well.

"We need to go talk to Kyle," I said.

Noah pulled into my driveway. "Why?"

"Because I think he's going to..." I paused. Oh please let this not sound insane. "...kill himself."

He sat there staring at me, the car idling. Then in an eerie moment where he looked as calm and unfazed as his Yurei, he simply asked, "Why?"

"I know someone who killed himself, and Kyle is acting like that." I don't even know if that was the most convoluted lie or the most convoluted truth I'd ever told. I didn't have time to sort it out.

"Like how?"

I explained how strange he'd acted the day we'd played paintball and how he'd almost lost it in homeroom with MacKenzie. I threw in the bits about his visit with Derek and MacKenzie's concern that he wasn't dealing with it.

We sat there while his eyes went cold and calculating as he stared at the water pouring off his windshield. Then he shrugged. "I need to make sure he's doing posters anyway. And I think you're right about him."

Without any more hesitation he put the car in reverse and pulled out of my driveway with a decisive crunch and some more high-pitched whining. I texted my mom to tell her I was going to hang out with Kyle.

Noah turned on the radio. Music came on, fuzzy and barely discernible, so he turned it up. It didn't get any clearer but I recognized techno.

"Dude," I begged.

"Sorry. I get like, three stations. One is country."

I flipped through every station and found something I liked. I sat back smugly. Until it faded out and we were listening to static. He flipped it off, sighing.

"Nice try."

"Where does he live?" I asked, hoping it wasn't too far.

"Uh, out past the main part of town, over the highway."

We drove until we were out in the fields and farms. Everything was brown and muddy out here, the patches of trees bordering the fields as bare as the fence posts sticking up out of the ground. I could tell the Amish houses because they had no shutters and there were no trucks in the unpaved driveways.

The windshield wipers beat a cadence while we drove in silence. Images from Noah's future flickered in the back of my mind. I saw him hunched over, alone in a college dorm just after the accident. I turned to the window and closed my eyes until it was gone.

We finally came to the entrance to a huge development, where the houses looked like they were a mile apart. It didn't matter which one was Kyle's, it was bound to be some kind of mansion.

He pulled up to the long driveway of a gigantic house with a sale sign out in front. The brick front had two white columns that went up to a balcony over two black double doors. Black shutters framed the white paned windows and the front walk was lined in stone and manicured evergreens. I cleared my throat. "Wow."

"Yeah. He's got it pretty good. Sort of." He added, "Then he had the accident. I thought he was going to be okay."

We walked out into the rain, getting soaked right away. Noah rang the doorbell. It must echo like a gong in that place.

The two of us stood there, getting wet. Noah's brown hair was turning dark as it got wetter, and I could see his breath in the frigid air.

It took three more rings before Kyle finally opened the door, his iPhone in his hand and his ear phones hanging from his neck. He wore a black t-shirt with some band written in red on it.

"What are you doing here?" he asked Noah, glancing over at me.

"I didn't believe you were going to do the posters." Noah explained. It sounded lame, even to me, but Kyle didn't seem to mind.

"Come on in. You look like wet ferrets."

It was a really nice house, but it didn't look as if anyone lived there. It was like stepping into a magazine. He led us through the foyer with a huge double staircase and past a room with an oriental rug and a glossy black baby grand piano. Our sneakers made squeaks that echoed off the high walls. I wondered if we should take off our shoes, but he didn't say anything. I was used to it at my house, but I didn't know what to do here.

We passed by the piano and I asked, "Do you play?"

"What?" Kyle looked over at the piano as if it had just appeared. "My father does. For a living. He's a concert pianist."

"That's amazing."

"He's never home. And when he is, all he does play on it."

"So you never wanted to play?"

Kyle looked at Noah, as if they had some private joke. Noah nodded to the piano. "Go for it."

Kyle walked over to the piano and kicked the bench to the side with his socked foot. He crouched over the piano as if he were going to pounce, his hair hanging over his face. His hands came down on the keys near the bass notes and rolled up, the notes filling the high ceiling like thunder and then breaking into a high, sparkling crescendo. His fingers jumped back down and played some kind of classical piece and then ended on an angry, dark, rich chord.

"Or," he said, his hands finding a melancholy chord. "If you like original stuff..."